Motivation in the Mitten: Learning to Find the Beauty in Waiting at Sleeping Bear Dunes

Michigan has miles and miles of lakeshore.  Surrounded by three Great Lakes that are considered more to be inland seas, she boasts a coastline greater then most on the oceans.  Michigan has beaches and cliffs and forest lined waters.  The most prominent being her National Lakeshore: Sleeping Bear Dunes.

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore lies along the northwest portion of the lower peninsula, overlooking Lake Michigan.  The dunes rise high above the water, giving way to incredible views and difficult climbs.  As you spend the day exploring, you will look out and eventually see the two islands just off the coast.  The two cubs, that never made it to shore.

The story is well known in Michigan.  A mother and her cubs left the shores of Wisconsin, escaping a forest fire.  They swam across Lake Michigan, seeking refuge on the other side of the lake.  As the mother reached the shore, she turned back to find that her cubs did not.  They are eternally enshrined in the islands off the coast, while the Mother Bear laid her head to eternally sleep on the shore, waiting forever for their return.

While this tragic story has the sadness of a waiting heart, it also brings so much beauty to waiting.  The seasons come and go, and the steadfast beauty of the dunes remains, with the story of love resounding through each of the seasons.  The colors change, the leaves fall, the mother bear sleeps.  The snow blankets the coast, ice forms, and the story becomes frozen in time for the winter, knowing there is no movement.  Spring comes, and the beauty of the islands and lakeshore come to life, reviving the world and bringing joy, even through the wait.  Summer shares her shores with all those who visit and learn the story for the first time.  They leave in awe of a legend.  There's so much beauty in waiting.

We spend a lot of our life waiting for things.  We wait to grow up, wait for the right job, the right person, the right situation.  We pass through time, waiting on things that evolve through life.  Sometimes, we can become sleepy in our waiting.  We close our eyes and just wish that whatever it was we were waiting for would just get here already.

What Sleeping Bear teaches us is that there is beauty in the waiting.  Even if what we want has not yet made it to us, the world around us still changes and grows and demonstrates it's beauty.  The waiting still gives us seasons to be in awe of, and still gives us opportunities to change over time.  And like Mother Bear, we may wait eternally for one thing, but the wait is always for Love that extends beyond time and our understanding.  And that is a love that is always worth waiting for.

So as you drive along and visit the National Lakeshore of Sleeping Bear Dunes, spend some time reflecting on those things you are waiting for in life.  What islands are you continually staring at, hoping the wait will end.  And how can you turn your head away from that, even just for a moment, to take in the beauty around you that is provided in the waiting.

Live a life full of beautiful waiting.

Read More about Fall in the Upper Peninsula